


Sweet Dreams and Memories

by gsaiyn



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-01
Updated: 2016-11-01
Packaged: 2018-08-28 12:05:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8445178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gsaiyn/pseuds/gsaiyn
Summary: Primary Paladins week day 2 - dreams/nightmares
Keith has been dealing with something no one else knows about. It's late at night and he finally opens up about it to his concerned boyfriends.





	

Keith had fallen asleep to the sound of television static from the living room tv waiting for his parents to come home from work. He hadn’t stirred at all when the front door open; he was knocked out cold from a lack of sleep. So, his parents quietly set their stuff down and tiptoed past him to their room. This wasn't the first time Keith had done similar things waiting for them to come home on late work nights and after waking him up the first time, they learned not to wake him up and just to let him rest. He wouldn't be able to get back to sleep and would bother them for the next four restless hours before passing back out between them in bed. Admittedly, he was cute when he fell asleep in their bed, but it had been an extra long day for the two of them and they wanted to sleep, too. 

The front and back doors slammed opened, causing Keith to jolt awake and fall off the couch with an oof. The tv had been turned off hours ago and the only light he had to see was the dim moonlight filtering in through half closed blinds. He could make out large, tall, dark figures rushing into the house through the front door. The dim moonlight glistened off some of them showing the armor they wore. Was that one purple? And that one furry? Were those ears? He crawled and cowered behind the couch, watching the silhouettes silently as they searched the house. He counted as many as six, maybe seven, in this part of the house and he was curious as to who they were and what they were looking for. He was too scared to leave the safety of his hiding spot behind the couch to learn the answers to his questions. 

The most he moved from his spot was when he shifted to get a closer look at what the intruders were dragging across the floor. He fell backwards and covered his mouth to stop himself from screaming at what he saw. Pulling himself back up, he balanced on the balls of his feet to keep watching pressed against the couch, despite how sick it made him feel. Being dragged across the floor were the, hopefully just unconscious, bodies of his parents. “Isn’t their a third one?” came a rough voice from one of the figures. Keith listened to them intently. 

“These were the two he needed. The third one can be left to rot,” a second voice informed the first. “We know they’re juvenile, there’s nothing they can do to harm us.” 

The owner of the first voice was silent for a moment, they seemed almost hesitant, looking longingly down at his parents. Finally, they replied, “Understood, sir.” In a louder, commanding tone they told the rest, “Make sure their restraints are tight and take them back to the ship! Let one escape and you will be terminated.”

Keith wanted to get up and follow them, to fight them, to make sure his family was okay. But he was only eleven-years-old, he couldn’t do anything. His body refused to move anymore than it had in that moment and he shook. Hot tears streamed down his face and he whimpered silently as the intruders left the house. 

“Keith! Keith, wake up!” he heard two familiar voices call. “Keith, it’s just a dream. Buddy, wake up!” His eyes fluttered open and two blurry faces slowly came into focus. Keith sat up quickly and backed himself against the wall with his fists raised in reflexive defense. “Keith!”

He lowered his fists when he saw the fear and concern etched on Lance and Hunk’s faces. They sat on either side of him and took his hands in theirs to help relax him. “What’s. . . What’s going on?” 

“Hunk came and got me, you were flipping out in your sleep,” Lance explained vaguely. 

“You were kicking and yelling things. Things like ‘Don’t take them!’ and ‘I can’t do this, I can’t save them.’” Hunk explained to him a little more. 

“That isn’t like you, are you okay?” Lance asked, rubbing his thumb across the back of Keith’s hand.

Keith stared blankly at the space between them as he recalled the nightmare he had just had. He saw the faces of his parents when they came home exhausted behind his eyelids when he blinked. Then he saw the intruders and finally understood why they seem so familiar to him now. They had been Galra soldiers. Galra soldiers came to Earth once and took his family away from him. Zarkon had been to Earth once, he’ll be there again. 

“Keith?” Lance’s voice broke his concentration. 

“They’re gone and it’s their fault,” Keith mumbled under his breath as a tear rolled down his cheek. Lance and Hunk looked at each other and back to Keith. “Can I get. . . get a hug. . .” Keith bit his lip to stop himself from crying any more. 

Lance and Hunk let go of his hands and pulled him into a warm embrace. It was a rare occasion for Keith to ask for a hug so the two knew it was something serious. Keith held onto them tightly, not wanting to let go and lose either of them. “Do you want to talk about it?” Hunk asked him softly. 

“Just a little longer, please. . .”

Lance rubbed his back. “It’s okay, buddy. We’re here. We won’t leave you,” he assured him. Keith clung to them tighter. The three of them sat in silence, Hunk and Lance holding onto Keith and occasionally whispering small, reassuring things to him until he relaxed and stopped shaking. Keith had been dealing with that nightmare since he dropped out of the Garrison. Every night he had to deal with it alone and it shook him up horribly every time, it was never something he could get used to. Every time there was a little detail that changed, one time one of the soldiers had found him and another they only took his mom. When it woke him up, he felt like he was eleven again and reliving the memory. 

“Uh, what time is it?” Keith asked quietly, slowly pulling himself off of Lance and Hunk. He could see the indentations of their night clothes’ fabric in his arms. 

“I think we have a few more hours to sleep,” Hunk told him. “I don’t exactly have a watch to check, though.”

Keith nodded, not saying anything. His brain was everywhere, thinking about ten or so different things, he didn’t have much room to process what the two were saying. 

“I know Hunk was in here with you, but I can stay in here, too if you need me,” Lance offered. “Or we can wander through the castle talking about other things to keep your mind off the nightmare.” 

Keith was still staring off at things that weren’t them. He nodded slowly, saying, “I think that would help, yeah…”

Hunk stood up, followed by Lance, and they pulled Keith to his feet, both putting arm around his waist. Keith leaned a little more on Hunk than he did Lance, though he did occasionally switch between the two of them while walking around. 

Lance and Hunk chatted about things they remembered about Earth, funny things at the Garrison after Keith dropped out, the many different way Lance had been turned down by many a person. Keith was mostly silent, letting out a laugh here and there and “yeah”s. He cut Hunk off mid sentence to willingly talk about his dream. He’s had no one to talk it through with for so long, now he did. “I don’t mean to be rude, Hunk, but could we maybe talk about my nightmare?” 

“Of course we can. What happened?” Hunk told him. The three of them stopped walking and sat down in the middle of the hall. It wasn’t like they were going to be in anyone’s way sitting there. 

Keith searched their faces for any sort of answers to unasked questions as he recalled the nightmare. He left out details he realized to see if they could piece it together themselves first. They didn’t seem to based on their confused and concerned expressions. “I think,” Keith started slowly, “I think those ‘people’ were Galra soldiers.”

Lance’s mouth was slightly agape. Hunk asked, “It can’t mean too much, right? Just a dream, it couldn’t have actually happened.” 

Keith shook his head and put it in his hands. “That’s the thing. It feels like it happened. It wakes me up feeling like a hopeless and useless kid again. It wakes me up making me feel like I’m reliving it.”

“What would they want with your parents, though?” Lance asked. 

“I… I don’t know… I don’t know… I just know that the only consistency with that part is that my mom is always the one being taken away. Sometimes my dad isn’t there, sometimes he is, sometimes he’s not in the dream at all. I don’t remember too much of my childhood, to be honest with you.”

“So, if we go with the idea of it being a repressed memory, then it means Zarkon has been to Earth before,” Lance was putting together little bits and pieces. 

“At least his warriors have been,” Hunk added. 

“And he’s been in our solar system. We saw him in our solar system,” Keith mentioned. 

“Then he can show up at Earth again at any given moment…” Lance trailed off at the end. 

Hunk finished his thought with, “And we may not know while we sit here in the castle.” None of them wanted to admit it. They all knew Zarkon would inevitably show up at Earth. They knew they may never know when. They knew they may never get the chance to defend their home. But they did not want to admit it. But Hunk said it, and now they have to accept it. It can happen. It can happen under many circumstances where they can’t stop him. And they hated it. 

“I hate being a sitting duck, unable to do something…” Keith muttered into his hands. Lance placed a hand on his shoulder and Hunk on the other. 

“I don’t want to make promises I can’t deliver, Keith, but I promise we will stand against Zarkon together. All of us.”

“We won’t leave you,” Lance assured. 

Keith wiped away some tears. “Thank you,” he said through quivering lips. 

Lance and Hunk stood up and pulled Keith up with them again. Hunk let Keith climb onto his back and he carried him back to his room. Keith had worked himself up so much all night he started falling asleep on Hunk’s back. Back at his room, Lance went to leave them alone but Keith asked Lance to stay through his weariness. Lance closed the bedroom door and they all crawled into bed together. Keith lied in the middle, appreciating the comfort of his boyfriends gave him wrapped in their arms and legs intertwined. Keith got a better night’s sleep than he had in a long time. For once, he had a dream about possible future events.

The three of them, Keith, Lance, and Hunk, stood together in front of their respective lions looking over the edge of the mountain they landed on. The grass was green under their feet, the sky a mixture of pinks and oranges and reds above their heads from the rising sun in front of them, wind brushed through Keith’s hair pushing it out of his face. They looked over a destroyed battle field below them. A fleet of broken battle ships and sentry ships littered the ground, leaving large carve outs in the ground. Mixed with the ships were the bodies of Galra soldiers and other aliens who got stuck in the crossfire trying to escape. Looking to his left, he saw Shiro on another part of the mountain, and looking over to the right he saw Pidge. Above him flying into the atmosphere was the castle holding Allura and Coran. He took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “We did it,” he spoke into his helmet’s comm. 

“We did it,” the others replied in unison.


End file.
